Attorney General Loretta Lynch described her Monday meeting with Bill Clinton aboard a private plane as “primarily social,” but some Democrats are struggling to stomach the optics of the attorney general’s meeting with the former president while his wife is under federal investigation — while others are fiercely defending her integrity.

Lynch said she and Clinton talked only of grandchildren, golf, and their respective travels, but the fact that the two spoke privately at all was enough to rekindle concerns about a possible conflict of interest. Republicans have long called into question the ability of a Democratic-led Department of Justice to conduct an independent investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, based inside her Chappaqua, New York, home, during her tenure as secretary of state.

Once news of their meeting on the tarmac at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport broke, Democrats made clear that while the meeting was likely as innocent as Lynch described, it did not give the Justice Department the appearance of independence.

“I do agree with you that it doesn’t send the right signal,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said Thursday in response to a question about the meeting from CNN “New Day” host Alisyn Camerota. “She has generally shown excellent judgment and strong leadership of the department, and I’m convinced that she’s an independent attorney general. But I do think that this meeting sends the wrong signal and I don’t think it sends the right signal. I think she should have steered clear, even of a brief, casual social meeting with the former president.”

Those were the days:

President Trump on Monday said he had no plans to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, giving a vote of confidence to the No. 2 Justice Department official after reports he had discussed secretly recording the president and mounting an effort to remove him from office.

Mr. Trump said the two men had a “great” conversation while flying together aboard Air Force One to Orlando, Fla., for a law-enforcement conference. The pair spoke for 45 minutes, a White House official said. Asked after returning to the White House if he planned to fire Mr. Rosenstein, the president replied, “I’m not making any changes.”

“I get along very well with him,” he said earlier Monday.

That's fine. Sure it was a major scandal for the Attorney General to meet with the husband (a former president) of a candidate who had been cleared in an investigation of her email server management. But the Attorney General in charge of a current counterintelligence investigation of a current president palling around on Air Force One is just fine.

Trump has been screeching madly about the investigation being a "witch hunt" for months.

Yesterday, after he emerged from AF 1 with Rosenstein he smiled benignly and said "I think we'll be treated very fairly."